Chromatic dispersion causes interference in high-speed optical data transmission and must be compensated. However, it is first necessary to detect the chromatic dispersion.
In the conference proceedings of the European Conference on Optical Communication, held in Amsterdam, NL, from Sept. 30 to Oct. 4, 2001, Tu.A.3.4, pp. 210–211, a method for measuring polarization mode dispersion was presented. This method is based on an arrival time detection of a detected electrical signal obtained from a polarization-modulated optical signal. To this end, at least one signal parameter of the transmitted light, being a linear combination of one or more Stokes parameters describing the polarization, is or are modulated. The arrival time of the optical signal is a linear function of a specific linear combination such as this.
An object of the present invention is to present a further system and corresponding method for dispersion detection.